Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method, and more particularly, to an information processing apparatus for presenting mixed reality.
Description of the Related Art
Recent years have seen active researches on mixed reality (MR) aiming at seamless coupling of the real and virtual spaces. An image display apparatus for presenting mixed reality has, for example, the following configuration. The image display apparatus superimposes a virtual space image (e.g., virtual objects and text information drawn by computer graphics) generated according to the position and orientation of an imaging apparatus such as a video camera onto a real space image captured by the imaging apparatus. A head-mounted display (HMD), for example, can be used as such an image display apparatus as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-134161.
The image display apparatus is also implemented by the optical see-through method for displaying a virtual space image generated according to the position and orientation of the user's viewpoint on an optical see-through display mounted on the user's head.
Meanwhile, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-134161) discusses a technique for using markers to calculate the position and orientation of an imaging apparatus based on a real image acquired from the imaging apparatus.
However, in the marker-based position and orientation measurement, since the sizes and the number of visible markers differ according to the user's position, there has been an area where marker-based position alignment becomes unstable depending on the user's position. Accordingly, there has been a problem that the user experiencing MR does not know which area is an area where the marker-based position and orientation measurement becomes unstable.